Of all the things that confuse me (there are easily 3k this morning) this stumps me most: When did we decide that saving an 80-year-old's life is worth sacrificing a child's? Or that the value of their lives are exactly comparable? I could've sworn we'd agreed to something else.

We have special provisions for children. In court, they're treated differently. We've agreed they shouldn't have to work. They need public school (or so I thought). They cannot consent to sex. We have a set of laws that protects them.
I thought this was understood, and enacted by the thousands of examples we can gin up of adults running into traffic to save a child - not necessarily their own - or stopping a bullet. Remember those heroic teachers in Newtown in Parkland who shielded their students? That.
And we derided adults who USED children as shields, or failed to protect them. The mother who lets her husband beat her child because otherwise he'd turn on her. Society abjures such a person. The guard who hid instead of rushing the shooter in Parkland? Hated.
But now, with Covid is is simply disallowed to claim that we should prioritize, say, a 10-year-old school child over an 84-year-old in assisted living. Where the hell did this attitude come from and why does half of my social circle seem to believe it's right?
To me, this puts us on a level with societies that use and lean on children, for their own comfort, safety, entertainment....The ancient Greeks who had sex with young boys, mere playthings. Indonesian child labor markets. Hamsters -- because they eat their young for sustenance.
I will be 55 in a couple months and in a perfect resource-filled world, during a crisis, sure, I'd say save my life AND the 5-year-old's life. Yup, that's ideal.

But if there's one dose of medicine or oxygen? It's not a hard problem. The child comes first.
I've had two marriages - both interesting, the second thankfully near perfect. I've had three wonderful children and buried one. I've visited 14 countries. I've had three reasonably successful careers. Am I done? Hope not. But Jesus, people, I've had a chance.
In the structure inside my head, the child with the future comes before me. And I'm 100% bewildered that this isn't the accepted line of reasoning in our broad community. Prior to 2020, I really thought it was.

More from Law

One of the judges this story mentions is William Cassidy, who was promoted from an Atlanta IJ position to a BIA member position in 2019 by the Trump DOJ. Cassidy has an awful history that has been well-documented, but I'm still enraged reading this reporting.


The story notes that the EOIR Director served as an ICE attorney in Atlanta and practiced before Cassidy for years. And it points to FOIA records unearthed by Bryan Johnson showing they remain friendly.

A trove of complaints against Cassidy was published by AILA in 2019 after FOIA litigation. They generally show misconduct, substantiated in the record, followed by "written counseling" etc.

One way Cassidy could avoid discipline is by turning off the recording device during the hearing. If he made a lewd or offensive comment off the record, all the EOIR would do is listen to the recording. If it's not there, the complaint is "unsubstantiated" https://t.co/wUeBPEEbpV


In that case, Cassidy joked about a detained immigrant saying he missed his wife. The complaint was dismissed because the ACIJ found "no levity or joking" in the comment.
@littlecarrotq I've been tracking these since December. Michigan


Wisconsin


Georgia


Arizona


Another Pennsylvania case. This is the most important one in my opinion. It shows the Republican Legislature broke the law when they created a mail-in ballot law in October, 2019, which they knew was against the state

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